We are in the midst of garden planning. I am planning on doing some raised beds and 4-season-gardening this year. So I thought I might Join the Seed to Seed Challange.
Head on over and check it out if you want to give it a try. Grow something new and grow it from seed to seed. So next year it will be free! Yeah!!!
My family loves to have Scones on the weekends. Usually I make Chocolate Chip but I was out today. So I decided to make Cinnamon Scones instead. They are pretty easy and out shine anything you might get at Starbucks.
Ingredients
2 Cups Flour (I use white)
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
8 TBS butter
4 TBS heavy cream (you can use milk)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 C plus a tablespoon sugar
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
Pre heat the oven to 450 F (prejeat baking stone too if you have one). Combine 1TSP sugar, flour, salt and baking soda in a bowl. Cut in 4 TBS butter until crumbly. Mix cream, eggs and vanilla in a bowl. Mix the dry and wet ingredients to combine.
In another bowl combine the 1/4 sugar and cinnamon. Add 4 Tbs butter and cut/mash together so that you have small chunks of cinnamon coated butter. Fold this into the dough. Do not over work as you want chunks of butter in your dough. Form the dough into a ball and cut in half. Take each half and cut into forths. You should end up with eight scones.
Place the scones on a baking stone or cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool slightly and serve.
OK, So what do you do with an abundance of egg whites? How many egg white omelets can you eat? Make Meringues.
Since we have been making so much Gelato we have an abundance of egg whites so I decided to make meringues. I figured we would staywith the theme and make Italian meringues. The Italians like to make there meringues with a sugar syrup instead of just simple sugar and I have to agree. They are marvelous!
I use a basic recipe from Tyler Florence on the Food Network to get started. I then added some raspberry preserves and sprinkled cocao powder on the tops of half of them. They are awesome. I am sure that I will be creating many more of these in the future.
Now I need to get a pastry bag. Oh and a tip I picked up that I will try next time is if you are using a electric blender use the medium setting instead of the high. This make the egg whites stiffer with out getting big air holes in them. Takes a little longer but worth the effort.
Yummy and low cal too!
I am at it again. This time I decided to try some sandwich bread as my kids are bottomless PB&J fans. I have been spending $3-$4 on a loaf from the store and thought this might help pinch some pennies. I got the recipe from A Year in Bread, Susan’s Farmhouse White. I am still endding up with bread that is a little too moist in the middle. I already increased the cooking time by about 15 minutes but I might cook it still a little longer.
Maybe I need to check the oven temperature to see if my oven is a little cold. This was the same problem I had with the no-knead bread. All in all the bread itself was wonderful and when I get this one down I think I will give the Honey Bran Whole Wheat a try.
I found a great new blogger. She has three different blogs and I found her in my quest to bake a good loaf of bread. I love to read about other peoples kitchen gardens. For me personally gardening and cooking are intertwined. Of course gardening in Santa Fe like baking can take a little bit of creativity and knowledge of the desert and high altitude. But like backing gardening lets you try, try and try again. So I hope you enjoy the links.
These are my most recent reads. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver was a very an easy read. It was a nice enjoyable ride. I like her writing and I am hoping to try out some of the recipes with my garden veggies this year. I also found her links helpful resources.
I am almost done with The Omnivore’s Delema and have found it most educating! Some of what I found in Kingslover’s book is the same information as Pollan’s but I will never again think of the food I buy the same again. One thing that I have found particularly thought provoking was the industrial organic information. I have eating many of the products he speaks about and didn’t realize that my perception of the animals/vegetables origins were not based in reality. I also have a different understanding of the prices and foods available at my local farmers market and co-op.
I would recommend these to anyone interested in making more informed decisions about their food. You can find out more about the books at their web sites michealpollan.com and animalvegetablemineral.com
This is my kids favorite quick meal. These were made with elk sausage, green chile cheese, salsa and tortillas. Definitely a easy southwest meal.
Here’s a great video to enspire you to get those indoor starter plants going. Who wouldn’t love to grow all these heirloom toms. You really have to have a heat sink and start your plants early to get tomatoes to ripen hear in Santa Fe.
Check out Grow Your Own Veggies for great gardening tips and inspiration.
Here’s a nice leftovers meal. Cold noodles, feta cheese, walnuts and some leftover garlic sauteed kale.
My kids love to make cookies. Who doesn’t? I personally like to eat them. So here are the beautiful ccokies my kids made (of course I helped a little bit.) Happy Valentine’s Day.
One of my families favorite dishes is roasted cauliflower on a noodle pancake. I found this beautiful cauliflower at the local coop. I got two heads one orange and one purple.
The recipe is a blend of different recipes that I have found.
Ingredients:
One or two heads cauliflower (depending on size)
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup copped onion or scallions
salt
1 package noodles (I like rice noodles or angel hair)
two eggs
1/3 cup feta cheese
handful of chopped basil
Juice of one medium lemon
Preheat the oven to 450. Chop the cauliflower into small pieces and put in bowl. Pour 1/2 cup olive oil into a liquid measuring cup add juice of lemon and a pinch of salt. Mix well and add to cauliflower, toss. Spread the cauliflower onto a cookie sheet and roast in the oven until browned and a little crispy about 25 to 30 minutes.
While the cauliflower is roasting boil noodles in salted water. Mix two eggs, the basil, onion and the cheese in a bowl. When noodles are al dente strain and rinse to cool. Add noodles to the egg mixture. Heat a skillet on medium heat. Coat the pan with oil (preferably a high heat oil). Drop a handful of the noodles into the pan and fry until brown and crispy then flip and cook the other side.
Serve the Cauliflower heaped on the noodle pancake! My kids love this.My 2 year old even asked for seconds when I used the purple cauliflower.
I served mine with a side of steamed beats.
I have been reading and follwing Mary Jane since my first was born. She is very inspirational. She sells some great mixes and I have a lot of here recipes. I make my own baking mix to use with her recipes. You can buy hers and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend her products. If you can’t afford to order hers you can try making mine.
Basic Baking Mix ( substitute for Mary Jane’s Budget Baking Mix)
9 1/2 cups flour (white, wheat or mix, I do half and half)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder (non-aluminum)
1 tsp sea salt
Chill over Powder
Agar-agar ( buy at the health food store)
If you want Mary Jane’s recipes you can get here book or a back issue of MaryJanesFarmMagazine, 8th Issue, Farm Kitchen.
I have it and it has a load of great recipes. Or she has a few books out as well as a regular 6 issue a year magazine. Enjoy
One of our family traditions is Friday night movie and pizza night. I make homemade pizza and we all watch a movie together. This is green chili, cheese, onion and pine nut pizza. I also made one with Italian lamb sausage on it. The pizza dough is a recipe from breadtopia.com. I definitely need to get some new yeast as this one was a little doughy like the bread.
OK, My first attempt was a disaster. I do not have a La Coche or a dutch oven but I have baking stone. So I tried to use the stone and a cover but my cover wasn’t big enough so you can imagine.
This time I decided to use a covered corning ware and it seemed to work pretty well. My bread has great bubbles inside but is still wet. So I think I might need to let it cook longer and the 450 F temp. I think my yeast is not instant. It is just the regular kind so someone told me I might want to increase it a little. I will let you know when I perfect my technique.
This looks cool. Yeah I am on a video kick right now. Check out the website foodfightthedoc.com
Here”s the first of a 2 part series on YouTube or check out theses vidoes on FORA.tv
Mark Bittman has a great approach and philiosopy about Food.
No-knead bread, originally uploaded by fuzuoko.
OK, So after some internet research I decided on a bread baking method that I think will work for us. The only thing is that it requires a few equipment purchases, specifically a covered La Cloche and maybe a proofing basket. The La Cloche is a covered clay baking pot. I found a great site with videos and such on it called breadtopia.com
I am a mom to three home schooled children. We are very busy and simplified methods that are also economical usually work best for us. If it cost a lot or takes a lot of time we are less likely to continue to do it. No-Knead bread seams like a good fit. Hands on time is minimal waiting time is more. So that works for us. We are generally around the house we may not however be in the kitch. I will let you know any high altitude adjustments I make.
In the process I also stumbled across another blog called Touch the Earth that I added to the blog role. It looks like a very interesting blog about a family in Maryland.
I found a great recipe for homemade bread over at SoCal Pastry Chef.
It was pretty easy but I have never had great luck with my bread. I did have honey on had so I used some sugar and I didn’t have bread flour so I added a little bit of gluten. The bread did taste good but was heavy and a little too moist.
Next time I am going to use the honey and maybe adjust the flour and knead it a little more. I think part of the problem might also be my house is pretty cold and it takes longer to rise. I will try again and experiment a little. Anybody out there have tips for high altitute bread baking? Let me know.
We have started eating eggs for breakfast everyday. It’s great. They are easy to make and the protien really helps keep my kids full until lunch.
My favorite is poached and I use this great poacher. It’s quick and easy. Getting the eggs to the right softness is easy.
Just make sure when you are in a rush you remember to put water in the pan or you will end up with a fried egg instead. Not to mention you might ruin the pan. Lesson learned.
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